Fay Wells is, by her own description, a successful, educated black woman. Clearly, she writes well, and her story of mistreatment at the hands of the Santa Monica police department was moving.
I heard barking. I approached my front window and loudly asked what was going on. Peering through my blinds, I saw a gun. A man stood at the bottom of the stairs, pointing it at me. I stepped back and heard: “Come outside with your hands up.” I thought: This man has a gun and will kill me if I don’t come outside. At the same time, I thought: I’ve heard this line from policemen in movies. Although he didn’t identify himself, perhaps he’s an officer.
There were 19 police officers outside Wells’ apartment. That’s a lot of cops. It would appear that they either have way too many police officers with nothing better to do, or way too little crime and everybody wants in on a potential bust.
It seems that Wells’ neighbor, a lawyer, called in a burglary when Wells had forgotten her keys and had a locksmith open the door. He says he didn’t recognize her as someone who lived in the apartment complex, so he saw something and said something.
But as I read Wells’ narrative, I grew increasingly uncomfortable with its implicit suggestion that this was all about her race. There were too many loose ends, too many incongruities in the story. With 19 cops outside, she failed to notice that any of them were wearing police uniforms?
When she opened the door to her apartment, and saw a man with a gun pointed at her, her reaction was curious.
They asked me why I hadn’t come outside shouting, “I live here.” I told them it didn’t make sense to walk out of my own apartment proclaiming my residence when I didn’t even know what was going on. I also reminded them that they had guns pointed at me. Shouting at anyone with a gun doesn’t seem like a wise decision.
I had so many questions. Why hadn’t they announced themselves? Why had they pointed guns at me? Why had they refused to answer when I asked repeatedly what was going on? Was it protocol to send more than a dozen cops to a suspected burglary? Why hadn’t anyone asked for my ID or accepted it, especially after I’d offered it? If I hadn’t heard the dog, would I have opened the door to a gun in my face? “Maybe,” they answered.
Faced with a burglary in progress call, the police did what they’re supposed to do. Wells didn’t help. While her explanation, that shouting at guys with guns doesn’t seem like a wise idea, has some merit, she could have said in a calm tone that it was her apartment. She didn’t do that either. And even if she had, there is nothing to prevent a burglar from saying the same thing. The cops’ job was to figure it out, and pending their figuring it out, “command presence” compelled them to run the show as opposed to her taking the lead.
Fay Wells was on the good guy curve. To the cops’ credit, she lived to write about it, even if she doesn’t grasp why things worked the way they did.
Even her talk to her neighbor, the lawyer, had a dubious tint:
I introduced myself to the reporting neighbor and asked if he was aware of the gravity of his actions — the ocean of armed officers, my life in danger. He stuttered about never having seen me, before snippily asking if I knew my next-door neighbor. After confirming that I did and questioning him further, he angrily responded, “I’m an attorney, so you can go f— yourself,” and walked away.
In her zeal to quote the money line, Wells omitted the interim part where she “question[ed] him further.” It would seem that if she wanted to nail down the “you can go f– yourself” conclusion, the part of her story that drew that reaction would be material. She left her part out.
Even the part she did include, about his awareness of the gravity of his actions, is unsatisfying. Had there been an actual burglary, had he been correct in reporting what he saw, would she have thanked him for being such a diligent neighbor? Was she, a successful, educated black woman, incapable of recognizing that her neighbor’s actions could just as easily have saved her from walking in on a burglar who might have harmed her, if not merely stolen her possessions?
So does this story, as related from Fay Wells’ perspective, show racism? Maybe. There are questions here, such as whether the neighbor would have suspected a burglary had the woman entering the apartment been white. Maybe the police would have not sent a battalion of officers had the call been about an unknown white woman entering the apartment. Maybe the guns would have been unholstered but not aimed had a white person opened the door.
There are definitely issues arising from Fay Wells’ story, and her point about the gravity of the situation cannot be overstated. When someone opens the door to their home to find police with guns aimed at them, there is a very real risk that this will be their last day on earth. A misinterpreted action, a slipped finger, and it’s all over. It is, without a doubt, a grave situation.
I spoke with two of the officers a little while longer, trying to wrap my mind around the magnitude and nature of their response. They wondered: Wouldn’t I want the same response if I’d been the one who called the cops? “Absolutely not,” I told them. I recounted my terror and told them how I imagined it all ending, particularly in light of the recent interactions between police and people of color. One officer admitted that it was complicated but added that people sometimes kill cops for no reason. I was momentarily speechless at this strange justification.
So the cops used their imaginations, and Wells used hers. Her claim that she wouldn’t have wanted “the same response” had she called the cops seems disingenuous. Expectations are fundamentally different according to which end of the gun you’re on. It’s not hard at all to appreciate the fears, the concerns, that Fay Wells expresses. There are far too many examples of how things ended deadly to pretend otherwise.
At the same time, the indignity with which Wells was treated isn’t much different than the indignity shown most people, regardless of race, when the police arrive to protect and serve. That doesn’t make it right, but it doesn’t make it racist either.
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“It seems that Wells’ neighbor, a lawyer, called in a burglary when Wells’ had forgotten her keys and had a locksmith open the door.”
Burglars hire locksmiths in Santa Monica? Santa Monica must be more upscale than I thought.
Something about this one smells funny.
There is no information to suggest that it would be clear to an observer that the guy breaking into the apartment was a locksmith. Maybe he wore a jacket that said “Locksmith” across the back, or maybe it appeared that there were two burglars, one picking the lock while other waited for the door to open. This could also explain why the cops suspected there was another person remaining inside the apartment.
A lot of unanswered questions.
What’s up with the “last day on earth” line? I have never been able to figure that one out?
Just because lawyers are subject to reincarnation penalties that can include legs and even maximum allowable cellular division caps in the worst cases, that doesn’t mean people that the cops shoot regardless of the circumstances or culpability are subject to the same reincarnation regiments.
Embellishment can come with some serious reincarnation penalties but most often it is not taken very seriously if it went down in story format that involved closely held assumptions or locksmiths for some reason. I am glad to see you are aware of that, being a writer and all, even if you are a lawyer most of the day.
P.S. FYI, if you haven’t been keeping up with urban and suburban slang evolution over the last several years, the “nothing better to do” line is rapidly falling out of fashion when referring to cops. Although it is still the go to line after realizing that one is not going to be talking themselves out of a speeding ticket in an ever decreasing number of zip codes. Anyway, if you were not aware there are several slang phrases that seem to be gaining popularity despite their expressive and rather blunt nature.
To just what ends these new cliches will foster and improve police and community relations is unclear at this juncture but there is little doubt that their affect on the frequency and extent of embellishment in the typical story format regarding either positive or negitive reckelections of encounters with the police in written or verbal form has been significant.
You tell em, Mr. Barleycorn. There are hundreds waiting for your imprimatur with bated (unbated) breath.
Well, obviously when a reported burglary involves a person of color, the cops should just send a letter by certified mail asking if there’s been a burglary. If there’s no response within 30 days, they should try the telephone.
When a burglary in progress is reported, cops are going to come, regardless of the color of the alleged perpetrators. That shouldn’t be controversial.
The police saying she should have walked out of the apartment yelling that she lived there is disingenuous. It didn’t work for that black teen in his own home in North Carolina, why would it work for her or anyone. (1)
And burglars very rarely pick locks, outside of NYC and movies. Bump keying, turning the whole deadbolt with a vice grip, or an old fashioned prybar are far more effective and faster. Burglars aren’t concerned with property damage.
[Ed. Note: Link deleted per rules.]
It’s disingenuous all around, as is pointing to one instance where it went bad and inductively mistaking that one instance proves a rule. It proves nothing beyond the one instance. Similarly, some burglars break down doors. Some pick locks. You don’t get to make up the rules for burglars.
Ms. Wells claimed in the article that someone at the police department told her she would need a subpoena to get a copy of the 9-1-1 call. Either the PD was not being truthful or she is mis-remembering the conversation. 9-1-1 recordings in CA fall under the California Public Records Act and can be acquired with a simple public records request.
That somewhat minor point stood out to me as I sell 9-1-1 call taking software for a living and the recording elements in a public safety answering point need to be configured to comply with state and local laws.
Control the urge to go irrelevant because it somehow relates to you. This has nothing to do with the post.
Even assuming, arguendo, that not shooting the non-criminals is a reasonable baseline expectation, it’s still arguably progress if they walked away without putting her in custody like Henry Gates.
Did you listen to the 9-1-1 call that was embedded in the article? The neighbor said there were three hispanics, one man and two women who appeared to be breaking in.
Also interesting is that this event took place in the beginning of SEPTEMBER and she only now writes about it in the middle of NOVEMBER? It smells of jumping-on-bandwagon for 15 min. of fame and inciting anti-cop thinking.
Sad really. I too would be disconcerted if this happened to me but after 3 months I would have come to my senses and thanked the cops for doing their job.
I don’t know what to make of the one man, two women, thing. Maybe there were two people there from the locksmith’s? Yet another detail that is inexplicably omitted. And he didn’t initially describe them by race. He seems to be an ordinary concerned neighbor, for better or worse.
It’s possible it was also the building super – everywhere I’ve ever rented at an apartment complex, you have to go through management before having a locksmith drill or pick your lock.
While she probably would have mentioned it if it were the super, it would be infinitely more funny if that guy called the police on a building manager helping a tenant get back into their apartment…
We had a deadbolt actually break while locked and we had management standing there to quell the “WTF?!?” of a locksmith pounding a crowbar with a mallet at 11pm to prevent this exact situation…
We shouldn’t have to speculate about this. This is the sort of basic information lacking in Wells’ narrative. I assume the lawyer didn’t just make up the fact that there were three people there, so who were they?
[
The neighbor who called 911 makes an appearance at about 24 minutes into the Santa Monica police recording of the police post-event conversation with Ms. Wells.
The neighbor interrogates Ms. Wells about how many of her neighbors she knows. Yet he implicitly admits that he did not recognize her when he called the police. He characterizes the locksmith’s tool case as “a weird suitcase”. He characterizes the people with the locksmith (including Ms. Wells) as strangers he has never seen before. He continues to insist that these “strange people” with a “weird suitcase” were “behaving weirdly”. When Ms. Wells responds, he says “I’m a lawyer! So go at yourself!”
Frankly, his vocal enunciation slurs as if he’s three sheets in the wind. His continued berating Ms. Wells sounds like he’s more a meddlesome busybody than “an ordinary concerned neighbor”, and maybe just a jerk who enjoys harassing people he thinks shouldn’t live near him. I think that conceivably could be a racial issue.
The cops are quick to assure him “you did the right thing.”
Neighbors like that “concerned neighbor” I can live without.
Likewise the cops. They insist that they had to use guns to maintain control, and that they actually did initially identify themselves as police. Then they tell Ms. Wells that she probably didn’t hear them identify themselves because their dog was barking so loudly. That’s an admission that they had no control over their own police dog, or that they just didn’t care whether she heard them identify themselves.
When they ask her a question, or drop their voice as if expecting a response, and Ms. Wells responds, they accuse her of “interrupting”.
To me, Ms. Wells’ police interlocutors sound like a gang of Schutzstaffel wannabes trying to disguise themselves with smiley face buttons and syrupy voices.
I don’t think race had much to do with the police attitudes and behavior. Their behavior was ordinary entitled cop behavior. Ms. Wells is very lucky they didn’t simply shoot her dead when she looked out the window or opened the door.
But I’m not so sure the neighbor’s behavior wasn’t racially inspired.
]
Meh. The audio wasn’t available until after this was written. Now that I’ve listened, I don’t think it was a big deal either way. She blamed him for what the cops did to her. He was defensive. And it all ended friendly enough.
There is no amount of explanation that can be offered when people refuse to understand the experience of another, particularly if one is willing to exhaust many words specifically to NOT understand. What’s the point?
This is gibberish.